It's like any bank. Depends on the team. As someone who has worked for a long time in financial services, I generally think most people working in the field started out as nice people. Life and competition then happens and takes care of the rest. By the end unless you have very strong principles, you'll end up with a ton of money but you'll be a cynic the rest of your life.

Really depends on which area are you looking at and whats the job role, from what I know SCB systems generally are quite antiquated which means more manual effort hence longer working hours. Can be from 9 or 10 am to 9 - 10pm.

Also are you talking about Operations servicing the international desk, or brokerage team etc Every area has different demands.

All in all most banks are more or less the same for Ops, if this is your first job in Ops then I suggest you bite the bullet and just go into it. No pain no gain.

But don't have the idea of starting in Ops and moving to the front desk, its possible but slim chance. Most ppl end up disappointed

left the bank after working in scb ops for a year, didnt like the new location at changi biz park and well work gets pretty boring and routine after a while and if you look at your avps or assistant managers and figure out thats whats your life is going in to be in the next 5-10 years, you will feel like getting out doing something more meaningful in your life - operations is simply not worth the time as its not a skill like law, accountancy, medicine or heck even teaching. Understand you are getting paid to basically endure repetitiveness, and do stuff that the front office do not want to do. Unless you are getting into middle office or front office, dont waste your youth in the backoffice as you will just regret it when you hit your 40s and your work gets outsourced to india or philippines.

nice advice guys. actually i was referring to their accounting/controlling function. Believe this should be under Group Support or something like that. I assumed that this is also classified as back office (apparently I've never been in a bank).

Almost any dept within the bank's ops area will be quite mundane and boring. The areas you mentioned are maybe in the risk and control or compliance dept or internal audit (too many to list)

What the above chap said is correct, most ops jobs are pretty dead boring and its hardly a skilled job. The company may be fancy but the work is created purely because the systems are too manual to handle something, it can literally be something as silly as copying data from the bloomberg system and copying back to the banks systems.

That said money in the bank is usually quite good (starting 3.5 - 4K?) and also you get better benefits then working for a local MNC (20 plus days leave, insurance cover etc).

If you intend to come down this path (ops) be prepared to find a way out instead of being stuck trying to make it up the ranks. I laugh internally when I see Avp's (Assc Vice President) put in 14 hours a day and work on weekend etc, honestly is it really worth it especially when one day the jobs (Operations) will just get outsourced?

Try it for a taster, its always a good experience working in a major corporate. Just set your goals straight.

true, seriously if you are intending to go into banking operations, you might as well try out in the civil service as the pay is comparable. Only if you have a shot in front office or middle office will your salary and career prospects escalate faster than if you are in civil service as the experience you have gained in those fields would be much more valuable in later years. Other than that, just use treat bank ops jobs as a 'job' not a 'career', as a means to accumalate some money to buy a car or hdb, after that try to move on and establish a career somewhere else.

true, seriously if you are intending to go into banking operations, you might as well try out in the civil service as the pay is comparable. Only if you have a shot in front office or middle office will your salary and career prospects escalate faster than if you are in civil service as the experience you have gained in those fields would be much more valuable in later years. Other than that, just use treat bank ops jobs as a 'job' not a 'career', as a means to accumalate some money to buy a car or hdb, after that try to move on and establish a career somewhere else.

bank ops > civil service.

ops people make good salary too, and contrary to what you said, there are career paths within ops.

on the other hand CS is a dead end unless you're a scholar -- dead because it's impossible to hop from CS to private sector once you're in. dunno why, but the people in private sector simply don't like to hire ex-CS.

nice advice guys. actually i was referring to their accounting/controlling function. Believe this should be under Group Support or something like that. I assumed that this is also classified as back office (apparently I've never been in a bank).

I am in the accounting/controlling department of a small foreign bank.